Shaken and stirred.

January 29, 2013

Jolly Olde

The East Sussex council is predictably chagrined to have discovered that the Chaseley nursing home has been hiring prostitutes to, um, relieve its residents. For the defense, one Tuppy Owens offers this novel argument:

Tuppy Owens, from the Sexual Health and Disability Alliance, said: ‘Many disabled people are living in perpetual frustration. What’s illegal is for disabled people to be denied their human rights.’

Prostitution as a human right — why didn't I think of that!

* * *

It seems somehow important that Eastbourne is near a place called ‘Beachy Head’.

Barbara W. Tuchman: The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914The chapter on the Dreyfus Affair is brilliant and well worth the price of admission. Other chapter on Wilhelmine German politics and culture (and music) is also highly instructive for those of us who are still trying to grasp what in hell could lead Germany into two world wars. Many chapters just pointlessly bore, but the whole is worth the reader's time. (****)

Edzard Ernst & Simon Singh: Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine(10/09/2014) Treatments that have been demonstrated to be safe and effective quickly become conventional, leaving only quackery and worse in the ‘alternative’ category. Examples of such proven bogosity include homeopathy (although that is now a marketing term used very loosely), aromatherapy, and acupuncture. All have been demonstrated, in fair trials, to be bunk. Laetrile is worse than bunk and no, it's not an effing ‘vitamin’. (****)

Ian Kershaw: Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris(8/13/2014) This is volume one of a horrifyingly thorough two-volume biography (volume two is entitled ‘Nemesis’). Hitler was a raving bore from before WWI, but went over the edge – and found a talent for rhetoric and propaganda – after Germany's defeat. But the key to the main puzzle: It wasn't that Germans mysteriously bought the outrageous soap that Hitler was selling, but that he was a brilliant salesman for an already popular product made even more popular by the horrible and destructive Treaty of Versailles. Hitler sold it, in concentrated form, by the truck-load as the only solution to Germany's desperate humiliation. (****)

General Stanley McChrystal: My Share of the Task: A Memoir(7/13/2014) Btw, the Pentagon's Inspector General concluded that reporter Michael Hastings, um, misrepresented conversations with officers under McChrystal's command (gee, I didn't see that coming!), and the general is willing to let it go at that. Mrs. McChrystal thought that his retirement was long overdue, anyway. (****)

Daniel C. Dennett: Consciousness Explained(7/9/2014) Lots of good stuff here, but I'll have to read it again, maybe in a month or so after I've had some time to digest this run through. It seemed that he was being a bit obtuse, perhaps semantically so, on a few points, but ... well, I have to read it again. It's a long one, so I think I'll try something a bit lighter in the mean time.

Victor J. Stenger: God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist(6/1/2014) Stenger's project is to show that, when fairly and precisely examined as any scientific hypothesis would be (Gould's ‘non-overlapping magisteria’ be damned), the notion of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic ‘God’ fails. Stenger succeeds sometimes quite impressively, but frequently manages only to prove his devotion to the conclusion. (E.g., in a bizarre passage accusing Justice Scalia of religious bias, Stenger forgets to refer to anything ever written or said by Scalia on the subject of proper legal interpretation, and also that a devout Roman Catholic, voting his religious beliefs, would have to rule against the death penalty!) The book is thus valuable in places but too deeply flawed to recommend.

Stenger's arguments against divine creation apply across the board, but his argument against providence is specific to this one particular God and His generally agreed attributes, whose existence is thus rendered implausible in the way that an alibi becomes implausible in the face of DNA evidence to the contrary: Not absolutely, but well beyond all reasonable doubt.